Idaho · Side
Idaho Baked Potato
- Easy
- 75 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, fresh herbs arguing happily on top.
Ingredients
- 4 large russet Burbank potatoes
- 2 tbsp oil
- 2 tbsp coarse salt
- 115g butter
- 200ml sour cream
- 150g cheddar, grated
- 4 scallions, sliced
- 150g bacon, cooked and crumbled (optional)
- Black pepper
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Roasting in a hot ovenThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: dairy
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Scrub the potatoes and dry them completely, then prick each several times with a fork.
- Rub all over with oil and roll in coarse salt.
- Bake directly on the oven rack at 200C for 60-70 min until the skin is crisp and a skewer slides through with no resistance. Never wrap in foil, which steams the skin soft. 70 min
- Split the top with a cross, squeeze the ends to fluff the interior, and season inside.
- Load with butter, sour cream, cheddar, scallion, and bacon.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Roasting in a hot oven 56 recipes
- The oven was fully up to heat before anything went in, given time beyond the indicator light rather than judged by it.
- Every piece has air around it. Nothing touches its neighbour and nothing is packed to the edge of the tray, because crowded food steams itself in its own moisture and never browns.
- Colour is even across the whole tray, the tray having been turned at least once: no pale row at the back and no dark row at the front.
- It came out BEFORE the target temperature, not at it. Carryover keeps driving the inside up by several degrees after it leaves the oven, and that rise is part of the cooking rather than an error in it.
- The temperature was read at the coldest part rather than the easiest one to reach, and read again after the rest.
Where it goes wrong The tray was crowded, or the oven was not truly up to heat. The food releases steam faster than a cool box can carry it away, so it sits pale and slack, and the extra minutes spent chasing colour take the inside well past where it should have stopped.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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